Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy, was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his officers and comrades.  ’Every tolerably good soldier feels ’, says Adam Smith, ’that he would become the scorn of his companions if he should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.’  So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia, when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy.  The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties; but the poor soldiers had no hope of this kind to animate them in their toils and their dangers.

We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of discipline into every other service over which he had any control, unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they may happen to be raised and maintained.[25]

The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their infancy—­they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they never lose through life.  They are taken from the agricultural classes of Indian society—­almost all the sons of yeomen—­cultivating proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their means of subsistence.  One son is sent one after another to seek service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever cause—­the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers in families.[26] No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe to the state that employs them, or whose ‘salt they eat’; nor can any men set less value on life when the service of that state requires that it shall be risked or sacrificed.  No persons are brought up with more deference for parents.  In no family from which we drew our recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter a disrespectful word to his parents—­such a word from a son to his parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their highest indignation.  When the father dies the eldest son takes his place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire confidence and deference as the father.  If he be a soldier in a distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and returns home to take his post as the head of the family.  If he cannot afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase his contribution to the general stock.